Voelke was 'honored,' 'fortunate' to serve his country

June 26, 2012 - 2:00 AM

Editor's note: Maj. Paul Voelke, who died in Afghanistan on Friday, graduated from Monroe-Woodbury High School in 1994 and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1998. The following is a portion of a Veterans Day 2009 My View: ‘Why I serve,' that was written by Voelke:

As Veterans Day approaches, it gives me the opportunity to consider why I first chose to serve my country as a teenager, and why, after 11 years, I continue to serve in the United States Army.

There are two reasons. The first is that I love helping people, and the second is that the people I serve alongside — soldiers, Army civilians (and sailors, airmen and Marines, too) — are a truly amazing group. They represent the best in all of us. Dedicated to their nation and their comrades, they are selfless and loyal. And I consider myself fortunate to be among them.

Over the past 11 years, the Army has sent me to a variety of places, at home and abroad. There have been cold places and hot places, urban areas and rural. There have been places where I've enforced a peace, and places where I've been at war. I've met with village elders, teachers, engineers, sheikhs, town council members, police officers and imams.

In each case, in all of those places — Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo — my mission has been to help people; to help them live their lives just like Americans want to live their life — in peace, and able to provide for their families. They only want to send their children to school, and live with electricity, clean running water, functioning sewers, and safe roads and markets.

My role has been to help them achieve that, to live the Iraqi, the Afghan, the Kosovar dream. My job has been to provide the security, to protect the citizens of those countries, so the other things can happen. But helping people hasn't just been limited to the times when I've been deployed overseas.

My job during training, times when we've been getting ready to go overseas, has been to help the soldiers assigned to my command. It has meant making sure that their families were prepared for separation, helping them to get the schooling they needed and develop the skills they required for promotion or to return to civilian life. It has also meant training junior officers and noncommissioned officers to take on increased responsibility and lead their soldiers in combat.

The best part of my service has been, and continues to be, the people I get to interact with every day. A fellow soldier once said, "People join for the stuff they see on TV. They stay for the people."

What makes them so special? They are people who live selfless service. They endure separation from their families, austere environments, and in some cases they pass up lucrative jobs to serve. They ask their families to sacrifice — spouses who have to put down roots every few years in a new place, make new friends, learn new school systems and often do it alone.

I continue to serve because I believe in what I do, and I am honored to work with my fellow soldiers.